June
4, 2007
Since Dr. Martin Olsen’s last visit to Iraq in 2004,
the general mood in Iraqi Kurdistan has changed.
“Last time, there was a higher sense of optimism for
the future,” he said. “Now there is more of a
resignation, but there is also tenacity. They are
resigned to the fact that there’s a certain extent
that they’re on their own and they have to do what
they have to do themselves, so they’re less likely
to ask for help.”
Olsen, the head of the obstetrics and gynecology
department at East Tennessee State University’s
James H. Quillen College of Medicine, spent a week
in Iraq this April with Dr. Randall Williams, an OB/GYN
from Raleigh, N.C. The trip was sponsored by the
Medical Alliance for Iraq.
“We had three things we wanted to accomplish: We
wanted to put on a continuing medical education
conference, we wanted to bring laparoscopy to the
maternity hospital and we wanted to start an OB/GYN
specialty society,” Olsen said.
Olsen hopes the physician society will be able to
serve as a political advocate for the Iraqi medical
system.
“Politicians pay more attention to a group of
physicians that say, ‘We need this for our
patients,’ as opposed to one doctor here and one
doctor there,” he said.
The laparoscopy training Olsen and Williams offered
allowed the Iraqi doctors to employ equipment that
had been in their hospital for years but that they
were unable to use. |
Dr. Martin Olsen teaches a doctor in Iraqi Kurdistan
how to use a laparoscope during a recent visit to
Kurdistan region. |
|
“Somebody gave them the equipment, but they never
gave them the expertise to teach them how to use
it,” Olsen said.
“They needed somebody on the ground to actually do a
procedure with them. They have reasonable surgical
skill, and once we showed them how to use the
equipment and how to make the proper incisions, they
actually did a case without us before we left.”
The equipment had probably been delivered during the
oil for food era in the late 1990s, Olsen said.
“It’s easier to send equipment than it is to
actually send someone to teach you how to use it,”
he said.
The Iraqi doctors were eager to learn.
“It was like children at Christmas,” Olsen said.
“They were literally jumping up and down with
excitement at the chance to do something new. That
was very rewarding.”
Training is hard to come by for many Iraqi doctors,
especially those in the northern regions. Olsen’s
personal impression of the political climate in Iraq
was one of deep divisions.
“It’s very obvious to me that the Kurds have no
intention whatsoever of being part of a united Iraq,
and that filters down to the medical system,” he
said. “It actually filters to the visa level. To
send somebody out of Iraqi Kurdistan to America for
training, they’ve got to get a visa in Baghdad, and
if the Sunnis don’t like the Kurds and the Sunnis
are giving the visas, they don’t give visas to the
Kurds because they don’t like them.”
Because the doctors in Iraqi Kurdistan have limited
access to training, their medical knowledge is
sometimes spotty.
“They have very good knowledge in some areas and
then in the next area, they may have knowledge
that’s less than our third-year medical students,”
Olsen said. “If they’ve gone to a conference on
pediatric infectious diseases, they may know that
very well, but they may know nothing about pediatric
cardiac disease. In my case, there was very good
knowledge by some in polycystic ovarian disease but
very poor knowledge in precocious puberty. Somewhere
they went to a conference or something on that
topic, and they learned it really well, but the
other topic was never taught, so they
never learned it.”
That’s why Olsen felt that his greatest
accomplishment during this visit was organizing the
continuing medical education conference. He believes
important medical knowledge is available in Iraq,
but the doctors with the know-how need a platform to
share it and a little encouragement to step up and
take the lead in education. Half of the lectures at
the CME conference were led by local doctors.
“The lecture that I enjoyed the most was by a local
expert who discussed chemical weapons and their
residual effects on the Kurdish population,
specifically when Saddam used chemical weapons on
about 280 sites in the late ’80s, and now they have
increased birth defects and molar gestations and
infertility thought to be in those areas — perhaps
the residual effects from the food supply,” Olsen
said.
As for the general mood of Iraqi medical leaders,
Olsen hopes that his visit made a good impression.
“They’ve been promised so much and delivered so
little for so long,” he said. “For example, the
conference agenda was not set until the day before
the conference. There was a part of me that thought,
‘Were you afraid I wasn’t really going to come? Have
you been disappointed so many times that you didn’t
want to set the agenda until you actually laid eyes
on me?’ I wonder whether that was the case, because
they have been disappointed so many times by
promises that weren’t kept.”
Olsen and his colleague were treated “like rock
stars” by the people they met in Iraq. The American
medical system is well respected there, he said, and
American physicians tend to draw large crowds.
“Just having (Americans) show up and say, ‘We care
about you,’ does a lot for their self esteem,” he
said. “They took away the new information, and
hopefully they took away the chance that they can
make a difference as a part of their new medical
society.”
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